letting things jolt along in the same rut wherein we and they were born,
without inquiring whether, lifted into another groove, they might not
run more easily, that, if one who does see the difficulty holds his
peace, the very stones will cry out. However gladly one would lie on
a bed of roses and glide silken-sailed down the stream of life, how
exquisitely painful soever it may be to say what you fear and feel may
give pain, it is only a Sybarite who sets ease above righteousness, only
a coward who misses victory through dread of defeat.

There are many false ideas afloat regarding womanly duties. I do not
design now to open anew any vulgar, worn-out, woman's-rightsy question.
Every remark that could be made on that theme has been made--but one,
and that I will take the liberty to make now in a single sentence and
close the discussion. It is this: the man who gave rubber-boots to women
did more to elevate woman than all the theorizers, male or female, that
ever were born.

But without any suspicious lunges into that dubious region which lies
outside of woman's universally acknowledged "sphere," (a blight rest
upon the word!) there is within the pale, within the boundary-line which
the most conservative never dreamed of questioning, room for a great
divergence of ideas. Now divergence of ideas does not necessarily imply
fighting at short range. People may adopt a course of conduct which
you do not approve; yet you may feel it your duty to make no open
animadversion. Circumstances may have suggested such a course to them,
or forced it upon them; and perhaps, considering all things, it is the
best they can do. But when, encouraged by your silence, they publish it
to the world, not only as relatively, but intrinsically, the best and
most desirable,--when, not content with swallowing it themselves as
medicine, they insist on ramming it down your throat as food,--it is
time to buckle on your armor and have at them.

A little book, published by the Tract Society, called "The Mother and
her Work," has been doing just this thing. It is a modest little book.
It makes no pretensions to literary or other superiority. It has much
excellent counsel, pious reflection, and comfortable suggestion. Being
a little book, it costs but little, and it will console, refresh, and
instruct weary, conscientious mothers, and so have a large circulation,
a wide influence, and do an immense amount of mischief. For the Evil One
in his senses nev